Do Not Believe Your Eyes, 2000

Do Not Believe Your Eyes, 2000

Gallery 111, West Hall

March 21, 2011 4:00 PM - March 26, 2011

Oleg Mavromatti

The yard of the Institute
of Culturology, Moscow

"Do
Not Believe Your Eyes" (2000) is a multi layered performance art piece,
which addresses responsibility of artists to their role in society by
representing crucifixion as an archetype of pain, humiliation and
dedication.

"Do
Not Believe Your Eyes" was meant to be a scene from the film "Oil on Canvas,"
(never finished) in which Mavromatti directed in 2000 and played the main role.
The film was a story about an artist who killed his best friend because of
professional envy. As a sign of repentance the character creates "Do Not
Believe Your Eyes" asking a rhetorical
question-what should be his priority: commercial success or social
responsibility? He chooses self-punishment and crucifixion as a widely used
method for public humiliation to conquer his ego and show his sincerity.

Mavromatti's primary intention as an artist and filmmaker
was to investigate pain as an inseparable part of the creative process. In the
context of the socio-political situation in Russia, the action was also to
address the fusion between the Orthodox Church and the state, which fusion
compromised both institutions. In the context of art, the piece and the film
critiqued the growing commercialization in Russian art.

This action exists only as a documentation of the
performance made within the film.

The
undeveloped film tape was confiscated by the police in 2000 after a legal complaint from
the members of some conservative factions from the Orthodox Church like the
Orthodox Gonfalon Holders and the nationalist party Russian National Unity, and it was submitted to the
Attorney General Office. Mavromatti is persecuted under law 282 from the
Russian Criminal Codex for inciting "religious and national animosity." His
home was searched on 07.07.2000 and all his video and film materials were
confiscated. He received death threats. Although Mavromatti's intentions were
not to offend anyone, but rather to address important issues for the whole
society, his art was misunderstood. Under this pressure he was forced to leave
Russia and he has lived in exile since 2000 in Bulgaria and yhe USA.

His case is not isolated and is
part of the more than decade long tendency of artists and cultural producers who are persecuted under law 282 in Russia. This tendency sometimes has surprising
results, like the recent posthumous conviction of the writer Leo Tolstoy, found
guilty under law 282 for his critique of the beginning of the 20th
century policy of the church. Artists, curators and cultural producers have been
successfully convicted under this law for the last fourteen years, not to
mention the journalists. This tendency has been recognised and reflected in
statements by human rights organizations like Amnesty International and the
National Coalition Against Censorship, NY.

About the Artist

Oleg Mavromatti
(b.1965, USSR) is an interdisciplinary artist, who works in the field of
performance, installation, film, video and computer animation. An outstanding
representative of the Moscow actionism. Mavromatti's works have been shown at
venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; The Culture Center of Stockholm,
Pro-Arte Institute, St. Petersburg; Museum of Cinema and Central House of the
Artists, Moscow. In 2004 together with Boryana Rossa he co-founded the art
collective ULTRAFUTURO, which works in the intersection of technology, ethics
and human/machine identity. ULTRAFUTURO is an initiator of International Robot
Day (since Feb 5th 2004).

Mavromatti was also a
member and founder of the art collectives Netseziudik (1993-1995) and ETI
(Expropriation on the Territory of Art: 1989). Mavromatti's performances are
substantial part of the respected historical monography "Russian Actionism
1990-2000" (2008) by Andrei Kovalev.